RIGBY, Cathy

(b. 12 December 1952 in Long Beach, California), Olympic gymnast whose performances in the late 1960s revolutionized women's gymnastics and popularized the sport in the United States.

Rigby is the third of five children of Paul Rigby, an aeronautical engineer, and Anita Peters Rigby, an aerospace materials analyst. Rigby's gymnastics career began in 1961 when her father signed her up for a trampoline class. Although she was just nine, her fearlessness and talent attracted the attention of Coach Bud Marquette, a gymnastics champion in the 1930s who ran one of the best gymnastics training programs in the United States. In 1963, when Rigby was eleven years old, Marquette invited her to become a member of his Southern California Acrobatic Team (SCATS), located in Long Beach, California. Two years later Rigby was touring and performing in gymnastics exhibitions throughout the United States with SCATS. In 1967 at her first official gymnastics meet, the Midwest Open in Chicago, she placed second in her age group.

Under Marquette's coaching Rigby qualified for the 1968 U.S. Olympic women's gymnastic team that competed in Mexico City. At fifteen she was the team's youngest member. Cute with a radiant smile, Rigby was courted by the media and public. Rigby came in sixteenth in overall scoring, the most points ever scored by an American woman gymnast. Four feet, eleven inches tall, with blond pigtails, she enthralled the public with her fearless, well-executed moves. Her pixie-like performance changed the face of women's gymnastics. After Rigby, aerobatic, childlike performers such as Russia's Olga Korbut and Romania's Nadia Comaneci would come to dominate Olympic women's gymnastics.

After the 1968 Olympic Games, Rigby competed in international competition in preparation for the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. At the first World Cup held in 1968, she won the gymnastic championship and became a gold medallist with a record score of 38.5 points out of a possible 40. That same year she toured Europe with her SCATS team and became a favorite of the European press. The German media adoringly referred to her as "Cookie," and the Swiss press called her "the American whirlwind."

Still in high school, Rigby was attending classes, competing in gymnastics competitions, and training seven or eight hours a day for the Olympics. This hectic schedule left no time for a social life, but she still managed to graduate from Los Alamitos High School in 1971 with a B average. She then briefly attended Long Beach City College, dropping out to train full-time for the 1972 Olympics.

In 1970 at the U.S. championships Rigby was the All-Around gold medalist. That same year at the World Championships held in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, she won a silver medal for the balance beam. She also became the first American gymnast, male or female, ever to win a medal in the World Championships. In 1971 she won numerous medals for national and international competition. She earned gold medals for all-around, vaulting, balance beam, floor exercises, and uneven bars, becoming the World Cup Champion. At the Riga Cup in Latvia, she won a gold medal for the balance beam and two bronze medals for all-around and for the uneven bars. At the South African Cup Championship, she won all-around, and at the US-USSR Dual Meet Championships she won the floor exercises. For the first time, it looked as if the United States might be a medal contender at the 1972 Olympic Games.

Affectionately called "Shrimp" and "Peanut" by her coach, and loved by the American public, Rigby's life seemed idyllic. But the reality was very different. Beginning in the late 1960s, she developed an eating disorder. Rigby felt that her coach really did not want her to grow up. She knew that Marquette worried that if her body changed during puberty, the added weight would change her center of gravity and affect her performance. Coach, parental, and public expectations for Rigby to win a medal at the 1972 Olympics put her under tremendous pressure. To win she believed that she had to maintain her girlish, ninety-pound weight. When her weight shot up to 105 pounds, she panicked. Obsessed with losing weight, Rigby began a practice of bingeing on food and then making herself throw up. Unfortunately, little was known about eating disorders in the 1960s, and she suffered from bulimia for twelve years. At one point she weighed only seventy-nine pounds. Twice she was hospitalized with serious health problems. Since 1981 Rigby has shared her story with the public in hopes of educating others about the disease and its health problems.

At the 1972 U.S. Olympic try-outs in Terre Haute, Indiana, all eyes were on Rigby. On the third day of competition, she fell while landing a flip during the floor exercises, twisting her right ankle and pulling the ligaments. She was unable to compete the final day of the trials. In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Olympic gymnastics committee named her to the six-member Olympic team anyway.

Rigby was the focus of media coverage at home and abroad. She made guest appearances on major television shows such as The Johnny Carson Show, The Dick Cavett Show, and What's My Line? Her picture appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and she was the subject of a feature article in Sports Illustrated. Rigby's picture also appeared on the front page of European newspapers, where one newspaper referred to her as "one in a million."

At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the United States came in fourth in all-around competition, the highest ranking ever achieved. Rigby improved her overall performance from sixteenth at the 1968 Olympics to tenth place in 1972, but it was a bitter disappointment for Rigby. Her performance was overshadowed by a new Olympic gymnastics pigtail sensation, Russia's seventeen-year-old Olga Korbut. Korbut won three gold and two silver medals and made history by being the first person to do a backward somersault on the uneven bars.

The Los Angeles Times named Rigby the 1972 Sports-woman of the Year. It is largely due to her that gymnastics became popular in the United States. From 1970 to 1973, high school gymnastics programs doubled in number. After the 1972 Olympics, Rigby retired from competition and formed her own gymnastics academy. She also served as an Olympic sports commentator for American Broadcasting Company (ABC) sports. ABC's Wide World of Sports, for its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1986, listed Rigby as one of the twenty-five most influential women in sports. In 1998 she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame. Rigby is involved in charitable work with the Special Olympics, the Boy and Girl Scouts of America, The Will Rogers Institute, Mercy Corps International, and the National Center for the Prevention of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Rigby's acting career began in 1974 when she played Peter Pan in a National Broadcasting Company (NBC) television program of the same name. Since then she has appeared in numerous musicals, but she is probably best known for her Broadway performance in Peter Pan, from 1998 to 1999, for which she received a Tony nomination. Rigby has four children: two sons from her 1973–1981 marriage to Tom Mason, a former All-Pro running back for the Washington Redskins, and two daughters with her current husband, Tom McCoy, whom she married in 1982.

In the 1960s Rigby drew worldwide attention for American gymnastics and made the sport popular in the United States. Although she didn't win a medal at the 1968 Olympics, she scored higher than any prior U.S. gymnast. Her aerobatic performance is credited with revolutionizing women's international gymnastics competition.

A brief biography of Rigby is Linda Jacobs, Cathy Rigby on the Beam (1975). References for Rigby's gymnastics career include Irwin Stambler, Women in Sports: The Stories of Twelve Great American Athletes (1975), and Anne J. Johnson, Great Women in Sports (1996). Articles about Rigby are "Little Big Women: Catching Up with Cathy Rigby," Woman Sports (Oct. 1980), and "Cathy Rigby, Flying High," People (6 May 1991). See also "Cathy Rigby," Life (5 May 1972); and Anita Verschoth, "Sugar and Spice—and Iron," Sports Illustrated (21 Aug. 1972).

Gai Ingham Berlage